The Telluride Film Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary with Robert Redford, Joel and Ethan Coen, Werner Herzog to name a few guests. Photo by Arun Nevader

The Telluride Film Festival is often mentioned in concert with the Cannes Film Festival. And there is some resemblance, were that extravaganza of cinema, glitter and global film buying winnowed down to the essentials, made more casual and transported to a glorious box canyon amid the uncanny peaks of the San Juans. It can feel nicely European.

So as the nation’s most erudite festival begins Aug. 29 (through Sept 2), it’s worth noting there’s a decidedly American flavor to this year’s gathering.

Although Robert Redford is primarily being celebrated for his contributions as an actor, there’s something sweet and generous in the notion of the nation’s most cultivated film festival feting the man who launched the nation’s most important film festival: Sundance.

In addition to being the subject of a program of clips and on-stage nterviews, Redford sets sail in J.C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost.” In this drama from the director of “Margin Call,” Redford portrays a man at sea who comes to realize the trouble he finds himself in may be irreparable.

Also receiving a tribute are Joel and Ethan Coen, along with their remarkable musical collaborator T Bone Burnett. Burnett contributed to four Coen brothers films, including their lastest, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which received a warm reception at Cannes in May. Oscar Isaac of the soulful eyes portrays the title character as he navigates New York City’s folk music scene.

Also screening: Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” featuring Bruce Dern as a recovering alcoholic bent on traveling from Montana to his home to get lotto ticket winnings; and Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day” starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, and based on the novel by Joyce Maynard.

Of course, right about the time you locate a unifying theme (Americans!), the breadth of the programming scuttles the hypothesis.

“We always want to have diversity and balance from all over the planet,” said festival co-director Julie Huntsinger on the phone earlier in the week. “It has seemed to me over the past few years, it was easier to find great stuff in other countries. It is delightful to have such great representation in American cinema.” But don’t overstate it.

After all Mohammad Rasoulof, one of Iran’s most courageous filmmakers, is among the tributees. In 2010, the director — along with fellow filmmaker Jafar Panahi — was sentenced to six years in jail. The sentence was reduced to a year, which Rasoulof has yet to serve. He was also banned from making movies for 20 years.

“Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” his latest, and the second under the edict, was smuggled out of the country and premiered ai in May at Cannes. Rasoulof secretly shot this drama, inspired by a real incident in which an agent for the secret police was ordered to drive a bus full of writers off a cliff, to explore the madness of a security state.

Even though, the festival added an additional day to honor its milestone, the last thing Huntsinger and her co-directors Tom Luddy and Gary Meyer wanted to do was turn all mushy.

“We never want to be sentimental in our looking back,” Huntsinger said in a phone call. “I’m a big believer in where we are now.”

Over the extended Labor Day weekend, the festival will be doing what it has for four decades: offering beautiful, dark, deeply engaging and, yes, occasionally vexing fare from far and near. There will be more than 40 film programs, including tributes, Q & As, panel discussions, and a number of films programmed by a roster of returning guest directors. Among them: Buck Henry, Don Delillo, Salman Rushdie, film scholar B. Ruby Rich, and Sony Pictures Classics co-founder Michael Barker.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.